This is the joint website of Women Against Rape and Black Women's Rape Action Project. Both organisations are based on self-help and provide support, legal information and advocacy. We campaign for justice and protection for all women and girls, including asylum seekers, who have suffered sexual, domestic and/or racist violence.

WAR was founded in 1976. It has won changes in the law, such as making rape in marriage a crime, set legal precedents and achieved compensation for many women. BWRAP was founded in 1991. It focuses on getting justice for women of colour, bringing out the particular discrimination they face. It has prevented the deportation of many rape survivors. Both organisations are multiracial.

trial

Since in cases of rape and sexual assault

o Despite the introduction of legal changes, specialist units and further training, many of those paid to enforce the law on rape are not doing this job

o The police often do not collect all the evidence or lose or misinterpret it

o The Crown Prosecution Service routinely turn down strong cases and often prosecute rape incompetently and negligently

o Judges exercise their own sexism, racism and other prejudice, allowing victims to be put on trial in court (including through the illegal use of their sexual history), misdirecting juries and reinforcing prejudices they may bring

o Incompetent professionals, who would be disciplined or even sacked in other professions, are not dismissed and rarely disciplined in any way.

Start and End Dates

Summons to a Public Trial
The rape of justice: Who’s guilty?

Three decades ago, when it was still legal for a man to rape his wife, Women Against Rape, just formed, announced a rape trial with a difference: women were putting the government and its criminal justice system on trial for condoning and even encouraging rape.

Most people now support women’s right to say NO under any circumstance and at any point, and to get justice when that NO is ignored. Yet, the conviction rate for recorded rape is down to 5.7%. So once again we are putting the authorities on trial for persistently “letting rapists off the hook,” which denies women and girls justice and makes us all vulnerable.

On Saturday 16th February, rape survivors and their supporters packed a London church to charge those who are supposed to protect us -- the police, Crown Prosecution Service, judges, ministers and immigration authorities -- with the “rape of justice”.

Nearly 30 rape survivors, several young survivors’ mothers, one husband, and a representative of Iraqi women took the “witness” stand in front of a “prosecutor” and three “judges” from Women Against Rape, Black Women’s Rape Action Project and Legal Action for Women, to give their devastating testimonies. The audience acted as jury.

This Saturday, women from across the UK will describe their experiences of sexual and domestic violence in a public trial to be held in London. The event – The Rape of Justice – Who’s Guilty? – coincides with the 30th anniversary of the campaigning group, Women Against Rape (WAR). Over three decades, WAR has campaigned for changes in the law, including the recognition of rape inside marriage as a crime. It won a landmark private prosecution against a serial rapist after the Crown Prosecution Service refused to prosecute in a case brought by two prostitutes: the rapist was sentenced to 11 years. Below, in an open letter to the Solicitor-General, Vera Baird, QC, the group states why it believes that the authorities are to blame for too little being done to prosecute rapists.